I’m informed also by how economists imitated physicists and eventually relied entirely on arcane math and model-making, treating economics as a rigorous science as though an economy were a natural, material object rather than an arbitrary human construct. In this respect, economics would be like the crudest evolutionary psychology which likewise implies social Darwinism, that the mind is natural and should be left as it is with all its biases and prejudices.

My point here is that even if economists don’t say or mean to imply to it, their hyper-scientific method reinforces that view and helps protect capitalism by making it seem inevitable. The collapse of the Soviet Union added to that impression.

Even if economists sometimes talk about private property, which isn’t found in nature, they bury that language beneath the math, so they can pretend they’re dealing with eternal abstracta rather than with history and with the powerful, corrupted individuals who have largely shaped the decision-making.